


Splendor

by mjoInir



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Romance, Explicit Language, F/M, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 10:30:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17527085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjoInir/pseuds/mjoInir
Summary: Juliette was at the wrong place, at the wrong time. And she's been paying for it since.Now fully enhanced, she has to be moved across the country, where she inevitably meets Tony Stark.





	1. Mishaps

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback most welcome!

It was a considerably nice day in Lancaster. Although, California was not known for its bad days, so nice days were common. The woman walked down the sidewalk, her black heels clicking with each step. She was dressed business casual, a pencil skirt, a pretty green blouse, and a light jacket over it. A small black purse slung on her shoulder, her hair pulled back into an intricate ponytail.

Dr. Juliette Clark was a chemical engineer at the NASA operated Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center, located inside the Edwards Air Force Base. Her, and a few astronautical researchers were looking into different types of fuels to try to get longer flight times.

She walked into the coffee shop, smiling at the smell of espresso—she had a feeling today she would be logging in overtime. Her barista was quick in her work, but Juliette's eyes flickered from her latte to her phone.

_Planning to demonstrate your new formula today for the board, I think we've got a chance with this one.  
F. Winston_

She pursed her lips, she was not as confident in the formula as her colleges seemed to be. However, this was the closest they had gotten—it passed all their previous tests. Juliette was only left to wonder who leaked the notes to their superiors — typically they all collectively agreed to go to the board.

"Julie!"

Juliette glanced up and over the counter, to see the coffee shop's manager, Leah, her dark hair pulled back into a low ponytail. They had become decently acquainted since she relocated to Lancaster to work on the fuel project. Leah was roughly around Juliette's age, working as a manager to pay for her to go to college for engineering. Leah was married with a daughter, who Juliette had only seen a handful of times.

"Hi, Leah," she paused, "how's Sean and Abby?"

Leah grinned, "Doing good, actually, Sean got a promotion and Abby's starting kindergarten this fall."

"Oh, how exciting. And your classes?"

"I've just finished up all my summer classes, making this fall my last semester."

"Fantastic!" Juliette smiled.

"And how are you, Julie?" Leah stepped closer to the counter separating them.

Juliette sighed with a shrug, "As good as I can be."

Leah cocked her head to the side and sighed herself. "I'm sorry to hear—"

"Juliette!" shouted the barista, sliding the iced mocha latte across the counter.

Juliette was quick to grab it, and bid Leah a goodbye with a smile, and hurried out the door. There was a young woman walking slowly, chatting idly on her phone, blocking Juliette from fast walking to her car.

Juliette let out a frustrated sigh, hurrying past the young woman, "Walk a little slower, will ya?" She rolled her blue eyes and sipped her coffee, rushing to open her car door and get to work.

* * *

After entering the grounds of the base, Juliette parked her silver car, and hurried into her building. It was practically out the middle of the desert, and with July heat burning down relentlessly, Juliette felt a need to escape back into the comfort of her car. The Armstrong building was cool enough upon entering, and she sighed in relief.

"Ms. Clark!" called an assistant, who was standing by the secretary desk.

"It's Dr!" she barked back, continuing toward her lab.

The fresh faced assistant went beat red and glanced down at the secretary, who was quick to avoid eye contact and hide her small smile. The assistant figured to ask her his question during lunch hour, hoping not to bother her further.

Dr. Clark was exceptional in her field, had achieved her PhD in Chemical Engineering in as little as two years (her knowledge of chemistry was astounding), and later gained a PhD in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, to her further her research at the Armstrong Flight Research Center. She considered going back to either study electrical or mechanical engineering, but then decided she already had too much on her plate.

Once at her lab, she removed her jacket and grabbed her lab coat, tossing her coffee cup into the trash and entered the lab room. Winston was already fiddling with his notes, and her two other co-workers (Lao and Patel) were sitting at the computer in the far corner, going over possible scenarios that showed that the formula was promising.

And this, of course, was guesswork.

Their director was nowhere in sight, but Juliette figured he was mooching with the board. After their formal greetings, they went back to work, and Juliette set to the whiteboard. She was staring at the formula, her eyebrows furrowed, her mind lost within the chemicals of it all.

"Okay, folks," said Director Johnson, entering the lab. "Prepare what you've got, we're heading to the observation room. This could be a breakthrough, people."

 _And you're sure as shit going to take the credit if it is_ , Juliette thought bitterly, her nose scrunched, staring at the whiteboard.

Winston, Lao, and Patel gathered up their things, notes and such, and started towards the door.

"Hey, Clark, you comin'?" Winston asked, turning to face the hunched over doctor on a stool staring at the whiteboard, her eyes lost in deep thought.

"Shit," was all she said at first. "This is wrong."

"What?"

"There's going to be a chemical error," Juliette said, her blue eyes wide as she turned to look over at Winston. "It's not going to work."

"You were so proud of your discovery last week."

"I didn't see it then." She hurried to the door, racing passed Winston, before she stopped and turned to face him. "If we test it, it's going to explode."

Winston's brown eyes went wide and raced after her.

"Director!" Juliette called, running into the observatory room, where they were beginning to set up. "There's a mistake — we can't go through with the test."

"Are you kidding me, Clark?" Johnson asked with a frown. "The board was breathing down my neck and now we've got something and you want to stop it? I'm surprised they even let you work with us."

Juliette's eyebrows furrowed in anger — now was not the time for more of his sexist remarks she heard every time she saw the dumb old man. She was known for her short temper, and she wanted to go off on him in the most desperate of ways, but she held her tongue. Yelling was not going to fix it.

"Hey—" Winston tried, but then retrieved a harsh glare from Johnson and then shut his mouth.

The board arrived in the next few moments, several established men and women, dressing in Air Force attire, as they sat down in the observatory, behind a wall of glass.

When they began the experiment, Juliette tried to whisper all kinds of rationalities to Johnson, but he shut her up each and every time. They were going to light the chemical mixture to try and prove that it could withstand the heat and burn slowly instead of all at once, like their previous attempts had.

They were all wearing protection gear, but as soon as it was lit, it seemed promising. But the feeling in Juliette's gut almost brought her to her knees. She knew this was going to be a disaster. She took several steps forward, becoming the closest to the blaze, to turn it off and explain why this whole thing had to be stopped.

But before she could, what she believed was going to happen, happened. The chemicals in the fuel began to react differently under the heat, and started to spark. One spark exploded, sending everyone in the room to the floor.

Juliette cried out, her skin feeling like it was on fire. After the ringing in her ears died down, she heard the alarms next, the high pitched ring that was alike to that in her ears. Her bones felt heavy, and her limbs felt weak, but she tried crawling over to the control panel, where she could hopefully release the doors and trap her discovery behind a feet of metal. She was hoping that way it would burn itself out - as water would only spread it out more, and the chemicals would burn off of each other.

The blaze reacted again, sending a wall of fire outwards, pulsing and sending Juliette across the room, her hands around her head in attempt to protect it. The fire burned her skin, to the point where it felt too hot to register — it felt cold. Her clothes were ablaze, and she was screaming, her vocal cords straining, and now burning in pain.

Juliette never imagined herself being burned alive as how she would die. Maybe in an experiment gone wrong, sure. However, she always anticipated it being in the initial blast, and not necessarily in the aftermath.

Rolling over, she attempted to rip the clothing from her body, noticing it practically turned to ash as soon as she touched it. Juliette coughed, her lungs aching in the heat, the air losing the oxygen she so desperately craved. The fire was feeding off the oxygen in the air, giving the room around her an orange hue as the smoke began to build.

She strained her muscles to push her onto her hands and knees. Juliette glanced around quickly, hoping to see the base's firemen, but instead she saw the four bodies of her colleges. Guilt ripped through her gut like a hot blade and her eyes stung with tears.

The alarms seemed louder in her ears now, blaring out against the blaze — and her world seemed to stop. Her heart sank. Until the base could contain the fire, the lab was going to remain under lockdown. Despite surviving, she was going to die in the blaze of her own making.

Juliette wanted to cry, but her body couldn't produce the liquid, and her mouth felt sticky, like she was desperately dehydrated. She fell onto her back and closed her burning eyes. Her breathing came in rasps, and she laid her arms down at her sides.

Even if the firemen realized she was alive, and needed to be saved, she deserved to die. She had killed four people, and deserved to burn with them. The orange, blue and white closer to the fuel, fire surrounded her, licking up all the fuel it could, devouring papers, books and everything it could reach. The glassware was warped, and beginning to melt.

Juliette's hands felt wet, and curious she looked down at them - anything wet in this room would have boiled off by now, which made her surprised she was even still alive. And the sinking fear filled her again, as she realized the gasoline-colored fuel was pooled around her — as flasks of it had been recklessly placed upon the lab table. Johnson planned to use it as backup, in case the first experiment went awry.

She closed her eyes tightly, sobbing loudly without any tears, and in the next few moments the fire reached her, following the drops of fuel, and engulfed her.


	2. Guilty

There was not much pain across her body, at least, not in the way she had expected. There was not that burning sensation running down her body, like when you burned your hand cooking and felt the desperate need to keep your fingers running under cold water.

No, this was different. There was pain - running from the center of her head and down her spine, pulsating like an open wound. But there wasn't that burning - just heat boiling inside her, comfortable, relieving almost, like a burning shower after being soaked to the bone by icy rain. Like drinking tea, or hot chocolate, as the snow covered the trees or the rain pounded the streets, even if it burned your throat, curled up in a blanket.

Juliette was not at all convinced what she had experienced was a dream. Goodness, no. The pain was still ever present in her head, seared into her brain, branding her soul with the deaths of her colleges. She could only hope it had been a nightmare, but the guilt made her feel hollow as she began to wake. And she knew she had not been dreaming.

Her friends were dead because of her mistake. They had families, wives, husbands, children. She felt a cold shiver run down her back and it coursed through her like she had jumped into a frigid lake - uncomfortable, _unforgiving_.

In the first moments of her body waking itself back up, she wondered why she hadn't died. Surely, the rescue team hadn't been able to reach her in time? Surely, she would have burned up by that point. And there was no possible way she could be in any sort of afterlife, even if she believed or deserved it.

When her dark blue eyes finally opened, they strained against the bright fluorescent lights above her. They hurt her eyes, and suddenly she felt ill. Her stomach rolled and she breathed in deeply - taking in the unmistakable odor of disinfectant. Although she had been passed out for nearly a week, her tired eyes - bloodshot - blinked until she closed them again.

"Wakey, wakey, Dr Clark."

Juliette's eyes snapped open, and she looked up to see an unfamiliar face. He looked older than her, but still handsome, that she could not deny. Blond hair slicked back, black slacks, with a blue button up and a black jacket, hands stuffed into his pockets. Dark cobalt eyes watched her carefully.

She sat up slowly, glancing around the white room. There were monitors by her side, and she had several wires and tubes hooking her to them, as they beat steadily to the drum of her heart. The light blonde swallowed thickly, her saliva sticky and her mouth otherwise dry.

"Where the fuck am I?" she croaked. "Who the fuck are you?"

He grinned, "Still on the Base, darling. Can't let you get out after the whole fiasco."

Juliette quirked an eyebrow, "You got clearance?"

The man chuckled, "For a few minutes, yes."

She pursed her lips, analyzing him - he was no military man. She knew military - she worked day-to-day with all sorts of ranks, and he looked like none of them. He did not walk or stand with their confidence, he seemed cocky, however. And Juliette wanted to know why.

A brunette walked through the glass door, glancing only briefly at Juliette, before looking at the man. "Killian, they've given me a vial,"

The man, Killian, nodded glancing down at his feet. He stole one more look at Juliette, "Until next time."

With that, the two of them left, leaving Juliette utterly confused on her hospital bed. She moved to run a hand through her hair, but was stopped by the clanking of metal against metal. She was handcuffed to the rails of the hospital bed and she groaned in annoyance. Why were they holding her? Why did she not have a mark on her from the fire? Why wasn't anyone saying anything to her?

Juliette laid back in the bed with a long, frustrated sigh. She started hitting her call button, clicking steadily to the beat of her heart.

"You're awake!" said a voice upon entering the room.

Tiredly, Juliette glanced at the door to see man in a lab coat, with a scruffy gray beard. It seemed to suit his tanned face and salt and pepper hair.

"What a miracle you are," he whispered, sitting down on a stool and wheeling over to her bedside.

"I'm not a lab rat." she sneered, glaring over at the man.

He pursed his lips and shrugged, "Apologies. What would you call surviving temperatures over 1,500 degrees centigrade?"

"Punishment for creating it."

"Well, whatever you want to call it, changed the cells in your body. It would have killed any _normal_ person--"

"I _am_ normal!"

"--but it seems your cells were already pretty different to begin with. They healed and adapted to the foreign chemicals. I'm not sure exactly how it all works yet - I have an exceptional team on their way to work their way through your DNA code, and your blood work."

"So I am a lab rat?" she asked bitterly, not even sparing the man a look.

The doctor didn't comment. Instead he stood back up and walked over to look over her monitors.

She pulled at the cuffs again, harder this time. "You're violating my rights by detaining me here."

"Fear for public safety suppresses those rights."

 _Public safety?_ she thought incredulously, anger building. She had no idea what had happened to her, or why her cells were different. She wanted answers, no doubt, but she wanted her freedom. 

Juliette kept her mouth shut as she sunk deeper into the bed. Guilt ebbed its way back into her head. It swarmed around her head like angry bees, and her head became the wasps nest. Violent replays branded their way to the forefront - almost to the point where she could hear the desperate screams of her co-workers.

She had warned them, for Christ sake. She had tried to get Johnson to stop several times, tried to reason with him. She should have tried harder, she knew she could have. If she had only pushed harder, demanded a second look; she felt so powerless lying there, the deaths heavy on her shoulders.

Deciding that she had done what could, she persuaded herself out of the guilt. _Johnson ignored everything I said_ , she thought, _if he hadn't been so arrogant and eager to please, then he wouldn't be dead. It's not my fault._

She pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind. Juliette closed her burning eyes, and forced herself to keep them closed. Perhaps sleep would bring her some peace, but what she got instead was an onslaught of nightmares.

Juliette woke with a start, the monitor beeping like mad to keep up with her sprinting heartbeat. She felt warm, unbelievably warm, like a fire had started on her skin - only there was not any pain. Her skin, however, began glowing a distinct orange hue, growing whiter by her hands. She stared in simple amazement, but fear struck her next.

 _What on Earth is going on?_ ran through her mind like a scream.

The handcuff on her wrist slowly began to melt away, bending around her wrist. With a quick motion of her other hand, she pulled her hand free from it. She couldn't help but just stare at her hand and then the handcuffs, and then back to her glowing hands.

Juliette pushed herself off the bed, and onto her unsteady legs. They felt slightly like jelly from not being used for about a weeks time. She clung to the side of the bed to keep from falling, the railing beginning to bend downwards from her grip, bending from the heat. Her heart raced in her ears, pounding loudly, as she struggled to fill her lungs up with air.

She began to panic. Something was wrong with her. She had been turned into a _freak_.

Pushing off the bed, head spinning, she staggered towards the door. She grasped the handle as if it would hold her together, but it began to slide open and she followed it until she hit the doorway with a loud bang! She blinked rapidly, glancing around her, noticing a few advancing men in uniform. Her thoughts were swimming, her head clouded, like she was in a haze.

Juliette felt an undeniable need to escape, but she laid against the doorway, panting, eyes flickering shut, only to open moments later. When they opened, she noticed the military men getting closer to her, and although her head was still unclear and her legs not entirely trustworthy of the task, she began running away from the armed men.

The adrenaline began pumping through her bloodstream, and it only seemed to add gasoline to the growing flame. Not entirely familiar with the building she was in, she guessed corridors to run down, searching for any escape.

She started towards a fire exit when she realized that, ironically, her hand was in flames. She screamed in shock and horror, but then noticed she wasn't in any pain. Her heart hammered against her ribcage and she swallowed hard.

_What in the actual fuck?_

She shook her head from side to side, shutting her eyes tightly, before opening them again and still seeing the flame. Only now, with the adding panic, began to spread up her arm. She pushed open the fire exit door, the alarms blaring seconds after, but she continued out into the warm California night.

Juliette ran until her legs buckled and she collapsed - but she was well off of the Base Grounds. Laying in the dirt, she gasped for air, staring up at the sky; frightened for what had happened to her, scared for what was happening, and terrified for what was going to happen to her.


End file.
